Omaha - The Omaha News, a live weekly newscast produced by UNO Television and School of Communication advanced journalism students at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO), will be broadcast statewide on Nebraska Public Television this semester.

The weekly program covers news important to the people of Omaha. The program joins Inside Art and Aging in Nebraska as School of Communication programs produced in conjunction with UNO Television now broadcast on statewide television, in addition to The Knowledge Network (TKN) of Greater Omaha.

The Omaha News program carriage on Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET2) for the spring 2010 semester is as follows:

"Statewide broadcasts offer the people of Nebraska a great opportunity to see what the students at UNO can do, and to learn what's going on in Omaha," said Dr. Chris Allen, The Omaha News executive producer and associate professor in UNO's School of Communication. "The Omaha News also represents a great experience for our students to produce a program that will be seen by a state-wide audience."

Allen said that because The Omaha News is produced weekly, student reporters have the opportunity to spend time on developing stories with different and fresher perspectives than what the viewing audience receives from daily newscasts.

Since his arrival in July 2008, Dr. Robert Franklin, director of Media Operations for UNO Television and Classical 90.7 KVNO, has made extending the reach of UNO Television productions a priority. Franklin is also an assistant professor in the School of Communication. He said UNO Television and the School of Communication have been producing great work for a long time. To bring this to the attention of a statewide audience meant working to enhance the collaborative relationship between UNO Television and NET.

"I believe NET broadcasts of The Omaha News provides a statewide audience a window through which to view some of the School of Communication's brightest students working side-by-side with UNO Television professionals," Franklin said.

UNO Television, in the College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media (CFAM), provides television production, program distribution and educational services to a diverse group of users on a local, regional and national level. It operates the Omaha Production Center for Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET), one of the country's foremost state networks, and serves and enriches the community through television programming that educates, entertains and informs. UNO Television provides unique educational opportunities to students through training and employment in a professional environment. Professional staff respond to the varying needs of the UNO community and our viewers through distinctive, high quality programs and the innovative application of technology. UNO Television-produced programs are cablecast locally on TKN and broadcast statewide on NET.

The UNO School of Communication offers dynamic teaching, research and service in CFAM. Students in broadcasting, journalism, speech and graduate studies in communication enjoy state-of-the-art facilities, award-winning instruction from top professors, and learning from internationally recognized scholars. The School of Communication enthusiastically embraces UNO's metropolitan mission and strategic goals of student focus, academic excellence and community engagement.

"We are a leading-edge program in Nebraska in terms of what we are teaching students, and the outlets and opportunities they have to develop skills both in and out classroom," Dr. Allen said. "For example, advanced broadcast journalism students working on the North Omaha Media Alliance Service Learning Project have partnered with students from Girls, Inc. of Omaha and North High School to develop citizen journalism skills to maximize social media's ability to further ideas and causes, such as teenage health and North Omaha's image in the greater community."

The University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) is Nebraska’s metropolitan university. The core values of the institution place students at the center of all that the university does; call for the campus to strive for academic excellence; and promote community engagement that transforms and improves urban, regional, national and global life. UNO, inaugurated in 1968, emerged from the Municipal University of Omaha, established in 1931, which grew out of the University of Omaha founded in 1908.